Google Search

I don't really know...but I have a question about your question.

Are you actually asking:

When I search "Bob McDonnell" I get...

When I search "Bob McDonnell and indicted" I get...

When I search "Bob McDonnell indicted" I get...

???

I think it would make a difference.

When a person searches "Bob McDonnell" does the number of hits mean the number of instances where those two words appear in as between my quotation marks?

When I search "Bob McDonnell" and indicted, does the number of hits mean the number of instances where both the search term "Bob McDonnell" and the search term "indicted" appear?

When I search "Bob McDonnell" indicted should I get the same number of hits in the last paragraph?

Gollum...

there is no way to tell what you are searching from what you have written.

Tell us the three different searches you made by actually enclosing the search parameters you used...in quotation marks.

What did you type into Google in each of the three instances?

"Bob McDonnell"

"Bob McDonnell" and indicted

"Bob McDonnell" indicted

Quotation marks in Google searches (or in most search engine searches) denote words that are forced together. E. g. if you look up Star Wars (no quotation marks), you will get webpages with sentences like, Between the World Wars, Hollywood stars took sides. Whereas if you look up "Star Wars" (with the quotation marks) you will not get the above sentence, and will nearly always get a smaller number of hits.

In order to get results which include different sentences which mean the same thing, e. g. Bob McDonnell was indicted by his peers, and The grand jury indicted Bob McDonnell, use the following search

"Bob McDonnell" NEAR indicted

This will provide you with the full name and the word indicted, within a certain number of words from the combo of Bob + McDonnell (I think the number is 5).

If you really want to do this right, you should search as follows -

"Bob (OR Robert) McDonnell" NEAR indicted

This gives you an alternate for his first name, if he's listed in court pleadings under his full name. Make sure to capitalize the terms OR and NEAR, otherwise the search engine will consider them to be a part of your search and not delimiters.

jespah-
Thank you.

From today's New York Times:

"By comparison, an identical search for Mr. McDonnell, the former Virginia governor indicted just days ago, returned 113 million hits."